Full-time bootstrappers - have you taken side gigs to pay the bills?

Traditional part-time jobs in tech are hard to come by. Especially in the US.

I think your best bet is taking up freelance/contract work for ~2 days a week. I assume you're a software dev. In which case this should be doable - if you have a solid track record and relevant skills.

You can use your personal network (Twitter, LinkedIn) to find this gig. Toptal or other freelance platforms might also work out, but I'm not too familiar with it.

Most companies will be looking for contractors that work 4-5 days a week. Make it very clear how many days/hours per week you want to work. This helps you weed out companies that are not interested in this arrangement.

Please let us know how it goes. There are many indie hackers looking to go down the route of well-paid part-time work.

I started taking freelancing projects ($9K/mo) a few months ago. It has been much less stressful being able to cover my expenses.

I resisted side gigs for 3 years and burned through a lot of my savings. I thought side gigs would drain my energy, especially for client-facing work. So before I started I built an async project management tool to minimize client interactions.

A few months in, I would say I am more productive. While I don't get as much time to work on my startup, I spend less time stressing about it too.

I came across Prowess a few months back and ever since have been referring folks from our community to check it. Great work Himanshu.

We created http://fueler.io/ - a portfolio tool for PMs to help showcase their work. It's an initiative to help folks showcase their skills through their proof of work instead of degrees and certificates. I believe that's how we can build a skill-driven society.

I would love your feedback on Fueler. Some PM profiles on Fueler - https://fueler.io/finallyaditya/, https://fueler.io/finallyaditya/

Even we are bootstrapping our startup, Fueler. I have been taking up consulting gigs, freelance projects to sustain our cash flow and survive. The journey is hard for sure but not impossible.

Thanks for the question, Himanshu.

Yep! I do some software consulting on the side.

Besides just getting some extra income, I find it genuinely fun to do. I like helping others solve their technical problems.

It's very doable - but it helps to have a "war chest" (i.e. savings allotted for getting by) for those situations where you need to pause doing the consulting temporarily, in order to shift focus back to your SaaS full time.

Some clients can be demanding and may want more of your time than you can offer. Be very up front with them about your time constraints before signing anything.

Most clients will be willing to work with you, especially if you do quality work. But some will be difficult to work with, and being up front about your time constraints will weed those ones out quickly.

Yes, consulting.

Justin Welsh did a nice thread on documenting how this can look. He continues to do consulting despite having an extremely strong bootstrapped product offering.

We, at Zeroqode.com, had some experience to hire web designers and Bubble developers. Sometimes it was a nice collab, sometimes no.

We bootstrapped in an absolutely new niche - No-Code web development. Here is our story of Bootstrapping by the end of 2018 - https://zeroqode.com/article/how-we-bootstrapped-our-no-code-web-development-startup-to-a-team-of-20-in-2-years/ .

Now, in 2022, we have 60+ people on the team.

I believe you can find in the article interesting info and our findings that will help you.

Hey Hsing, at Leadix we are in the same situation.
What we are doing (and it is working well so far) are consulting missions but with a SaaS kind of pricing instead of the old pay-per-hour model. We ask between 2000 and 4000€ per month for prospecting missions. This means that with 4+ clients, my co-founder and I can pay ourselves a decent salary while still having more than 60% of our time available to build our prospecting SaaS product 😊 If you are curious here it is: https://bit.ly/3c1qgZZ

I've always relied on Upwork and freelance clients that pay well so that I can focus on putting that money into my SaaS products (servers, marketing, etc).

That's the only way that is helping me push boundaries and invest in the things I truly love and believe in.

I went full-time on indie hacking over a year ago and after 8 months decided to work part-time in a contract role. I am the only developer at the company I joined so that gives me 100% flexibility in terms of when I want to work on that project vs my own business.

Prior to taking that role I tried the following routes:

• Software career coaching on Fiverr - made decent money ($1.6k total) while devoting 4-6 hrs a week on it. Found it too randomizing because I would have to respond to requests at any given hour.
• Small contract roles - worked on smaller scoped projects with some people in my network. This was fun and led to my long-term project, but the context switching of hopping between projects was an extra tax I didn't love.
• Transitioning from FTE to part-time - Prior to quitting my job, I switched to part-time for about a year. I worked Mon-Wed (30 hrs/wk). It was nice because I was super burnt out prior, and this helped. I also still made good money. But ultimately it wasn't a good long-term fit, I was the only part-time employee on my team (and was a tech-lead/manager too) so I constantly felt guilty towards my team.

I did a longer write-up here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/why-i-started-working-part-time-after-8-months-of-full-time-indie-hacking-d02afe5b80

I'm working full time on Squeaky now, but in the past I liked to take permanent roles, but would negotiate 80 or 90% time i.e. working 4 or 4.5 days per week, allowing additional time for my side projects.

The benefits of this were mainly that you have job security and a predictable income, but also if you're filling the gaps with freelance work you're likely to have to spending time chasing the next role/gig, familiarising yourself with new companies and projects etc. For me that's too much of a cognitive drain and makes it really hard for me to focus on my own projects.

I guess it also depends which country you're in, in the Netherlands it's relatively common to negotiate slightly reduced working hours which helps a lot.

I'm just starting my journey, so I'm doing freelance product marketing while I build to community/product.

I work on contracts to pay the bills. It can be great to decrease the pressure a bit, but sometimes I feel like I should work more on my own projects.

The process of getting contracts, and doing the work required can be time- and energy consuming. But at least I don't have to worry about running out of runway

Good question, actually I save money for half-year of bootstrapping. But it turned out it wasn't enough :)
So now I'm looking for part-time job or freelance to pay bills and marketing

Yes, I have taken side gigs to pay the bills. I think it's a great way to make extra money and it doesn't interfere with my work as a bootstrapper. It takes some of the pressure off, and that headspace has helped me build a better product!